Bringing the Kiddies to Citi Field

Last week, I had the good fortune of attending the latest Citi Field Kids event at the program's namesake stadium. The Mets invited me along with my blogging brethren to observe a portion of the day's festivities and speak afterwards with the present Mets players in attendance. They granted this access under the auspices of keeping the day's festivities in mind to later explain why we came together last Wednesday.

The program will seek to positively impact middle and high school
students through the nine values and ideals of Jackie Robinson, the
legendary pioneer and great American trailblazer who broke baseball's
color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. The "nine values" he
embodied - as articulated by his daughter and Foundation Vice Chair,
Sharon Robinson - courage, integrity, determination, persistence,
citizenship, justice, commitment, teamwork, and excellence serve as a
focal point of the Jackie Robinson Rotunda at Citi Field to advance and
perpetuate Jackie's humanitarian ideals.

Each of the Citi Field Kids visits will begin with a pre-game private
tour of the Jackie Robinson Rotunda led by a Jackie Robinson Foundation
Scholar. Other guests at the six visits will include current or former
Mets, front-office executives, broadcasters or a teammate of Jackie
Robinson for a question and answer session rooted in mentoring and
education.

What the kids did not know was which current or former Mets would show their faces in the Mets clubhouse last week.

Matthew Artus / Always Amazin'Try to guess which one is the next manager of your New York Mets. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

So when Terry Collins emerged with Jose Reyes, Mike Pelfrey, R.A. Dickey, Josh Thole, Dillon Gee, and Bobby Parnell in tow, they first exploded with the undulated excitement that we bloggers kept under wraps to protect the decorum of the media and its perceived impartiality.

By now, you already know about the big news that came about from that day. Terry Collins confirmed first to those kids and later to the media that Mike Pelfrey sits comfortably in the catbird seat with regarding to starting on Opening Day. Jose Reyes will lead off. David Wright will bat third, followed by Carlos Beltran and Jason Bay. This is all old news and long since broken by folks who get paid to do this for a living as opposed to those of us who squeeze out a few posts as our day jobs and other lives allow.

Rather, I felt compelled to write about last Wednesday's events one week later to tell you about the clubhouse. First off, it's a clubhouse and not a locker room. Second, the Mets make their home in a cozy one at Citi Field. It features showers with bathroom tiles patterned into baseballs. It includes the neon logos that adorned Shea Stadium's exterior above each locker. And the room is not shaped into a circle nor a rectangle, but rather a V-shape which makes me wonder if the players in the corner lockers can disappear from time to time.

I wanted to share my observations about R.A. Dickey and Mike Pelfrey. That duo represents two-thirds of the known quantities in the Mets' 2011 rotation and carry themselves as such, even amongst a bunch of school kids and the swarming media that's always circling nearby.

When Dickey's discussing his expectations for a Spring Training camp that won't audition him for a journeyman's job,

he appears comfortable in his knuckeballer's skin and as easy going as his slow, Southern drawl would imply. "It's going to be a lot different because it will allow me to do some things I've never been able to do in the past," Dickey said.

"For me, I had specifically going into Spring Training, there were switch-hitters that hit right-handed against me because it's a more comfortable at-bat for a right-hander. So, it will really give me an opportunity to not necessarily be results-oriented and really work on my craft, which would be a real blessing. It's something that's fun and I'm looking forward to doing."

Compare that to Mike Pelfrey, whose towering 27-year old frame does not quite match up with a soft-spoken voice that still features a twinge of youth. When I asked Pelfrey about whether the struggling players that took the field around him during the 2010 season became a detriment to his own performance,

Matthew Artus / Always Amazin'Mike Pelfrey handled himself with grace and maturity when dealing with tough questions like those hurled by The Kranepool Society's Steve Keane.

Pelfrey owned right up to his part in the responsibility.

"I didn't help it by any means," confessed Pelfrey about his contributions to the team's 2010 malaise. "When a team's struggling, it's all about the starting pitching. The starting pitching needs to go out there and put up zeroes. And I know a lot of times, in those games, I went out there and by the third inning, I was sitting on the bench and I'd given up 6-7 runs. And I know, as a team that's struggling, that's the last thing that they wanted.

"This is a team game, but I think the team looks for starting pitching each night for its momentum."

Speaking of momentum, I would be remiss in my duties as your friendly neighborhood Mets blogger if I failed to mention my first conversation with Jose Reyes that didn't involve me shouting from the upper deck. He looked in The Best Shape of His LifeTM and repeatedly declared himself injury-free.

Matthew Artus / Always Amazin'Will we be laughing with Jose Reyes after the 2011 season?

And though he lacks the build of a Mike Pelfrey, Reyes looks the part of a Major League ballplayer just donning his Mets jersey over street clothes.

And speaking to him, I just kept asking myself why his name NEVER comes up in the water cooler chatter about the team's captaincy. He never backed down from a question. He always sounded sincere, even when giving a canned response to a baseball question. And he laughs a great deal.

He wasn't laughing at us, or necessarily at a funny question or comment. He just laughed from time to time, possibly as a means of deflecting his true feelings or as a tactic to shrug off a comment. I could see how the laughing could grow weary on the media that follows him day in and day out. Seriously, here's one example from when I asked Reyes about his reaction to how Pedro Feliciano's departure crowned him as the team's longest tenured Met:

While it's a fairly innocuous answer, he confronts it initially with a laugh. He doesn't really give a thoughtful answer except to mention, "They want me to be here for at least one more year." Did the laugh imply the uncertainty about his future? A resentment for the front office that won't discuss an extension now in earnest? A lack of respect for the only club he's ever called his own?

What gets lost in translation from Reyes's mouth to the printed page is his infectious personality. When he laughs, we felt compelled to laugh with him. When he spoke earnestly, we didn't doubt it. When he declared himself injury-free, we saw no reason for concern. If he could harness that ability into more than an awkward tactic to deflect a question, he'd quickly become as prominent a face of this franchise as David Wright.

So where does all this leave the Citi Field Kids? Well, they enjoyed it. They played Playstation with the players, received autographs, and reacted the way you or I would if we were suprised with a lunchtime meeting with our favorite team. I'll admit that I felt a bit jealous that this program didn't exist when I logged my elementary school years in Brooklyn and high school years in Manhattan. But the Mets do this every month, and with kids from across the city. That's just cool.

I also kept thinking about Dillon Gee. I didn't get a chance to speak with Gee outside of a brief, impromptu presser where I failed to register a question.

Still, I kept thinking about how he represented the next wave of Mets young'ns who will pass through that clubhouse and cheer up the next group of school kids. What a singularly fascinating moment for a pitcher who fought fires with his teammates one day later right as the Mets hurt Gee's odds at a rotation spot by signing Chris Young. I'll have to ask him about that the next time, before he gets too big for his britches.

And I left Citi Field that day thinking about the interesting position we Mets fans find ourselves in these days. New General Manager. New Manager. Absolutely no expectations short of finishing above the Pirates in the National League. The team will purge itself of many burdens by season's end, and possibly break a few hearts along the way with the cold, calculated maneuvering that comes with running a franchise objectively. Mets baseball could become very different very soon.

But those Citi Field Kids don't know that. They just know it's baseball.

And for the ups and downs we'll endure courtesy of the 2011 Hump and it's aftermath, we know that, too. That's what I took away from watching a group of schoolkids get autographed baseballs and ask how the present Mets could hook them up with a future baseball job.